


dig up the roots of all the stories

by alamorn



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Femdom, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27082405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: Sarah Williams left the Labyrinth sundered. Jareth begs her help.
Relationships: Jareth/Sarah Williams
Comments: 15
Kudos: 74
Collections: Femdom Exchange 2020





	dig up the roots of all the stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/gifts).



> Many thanks to B and Scytale, without whom this would have been a lesser piece.
> 
> Some songs I listened to on repeat while writing this, if you’re interested: Mirah’s The Forest, which the title is from, Dead Can Dance’s I Am Stretched On Your Grave, St. Vincent’s Bad Believer, Soap&Skin’s Me and the Devil.
> 
> This is flavor text but Sarah is going to college at Brandeis and lives in their labyrinthine on-campus castle.
> 
> Sarah quotes [Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market) at one point, mostly because I'm incapable of writing Labyrinth fic without reading it about a dozen times.

There was a crack in the Labyrinth and it was growing, spider-webbing out in all directions so that it cut across each right path and wrong turn. Each year the cracks grew deeper and longer, and flowers began to grow from it, roses and rhododendrons, wisteria and morning glory, nightshade and devil's snare, a riot of color emerging from the earth, crawling across the stones with a sort of persistent hope. Each year, a few goblins fell into the cracks, or were caught in the flowers, and had to wait to be saved -- sometimes a very long wait, indeed -- but it was not until the entire castle was swallowed by a massive Venus flytrap that Jareth managed to choke down his pride and search out Sarah once more. 

She'd grown since he'd last seen her. Her face had gotten sharper, and her hair was piled into a messy bun, a pencil stuck through it as she frowned at a thick book. Not a story about him, he could tell, but something tedious. In the form of an owl, he perched outside her window, let the wind whip up around him so that her window rattled in its frame. 

After a particularly ferocious gust, she looked up and frowned at him, thick brows knitting together. She didn't remember him right away -- the Labyrinth had a tendency to recede, like dreams, but she still saw her friends regularly. His displeasure had done nothing to dissuade them, but his will had had less force behind it since she'd broken his throne. He could see when she recognized him -- perhaps she'd mistaken a common owl for him, but she'd never mistake him for a common owl. She scowled and rose, abrupt, and crossed from her desk to the window and yanked it up. He flew in, bringing leaves and fairy dust with him, transforming in the center of the room. It was narrow, a strange shape. She'd left the Labyrinth in ruins and found herself a knock-off, a castle filled with dead-ends and stairs leading to nowhere. The cheap dorm furniture looked out of place in the twisted nobility of the castle, but she'd put up tapestries and string lights, and his mouth only twisted a little.

Furious, he knelt to her before she could accuse him of whatever she felt wronged about lately.

"...Jareth?" she asked, leaning her back against the open window, as if she didn't feel the chill of the fall air.

"Sarah," he said. And then, oh, this was bitter-- "My Queen."

She shook her head, but when he glanced up through his lashes, she was grinning, half-disbelieving, half smug. "I don't think I heard you right."

"I have already come to beg," he said. "Do not ladle on the humiliation for your own amusement."

"You would," she said, and walked towards him. He kept his eyes on her feet. Her socks were thick, colorful wool, utterly undignified for a Goblin Queen. "But you're right, I'm better than that. Okay. What do you need from me?"

Jareth swallowed his bitterness. It took a few tries to get it down. "The Labyrinth needs a ruler."

"It has you," she said, and that she didn't understand didn't make it easier.

"No," he said. "You defeated me. The Labyrinth does not accept a weak ruler."

"Oh," she said, a sighing breath. "I have finals next week, you know."

That was too much to ask -- he stared poisonously up at her. He was here. He was on his knees. He had admitted weakness -- what else could she possibly demand from him?

She met his eyes evenly, held his gaze for long enough that he started running through what other humiliations he would be willing to bear, when she tilted her head consideringly. "I won't do it for you, and I won't do it for free."

"You are the Labyrinth's queen," he said, each word sticking in his mouth like a half-made spell. "As you make demands of it, it will make demands of you."

"I'm not the queen," she said, with a disbelieving laugh.

"What do you think it _means_ , to overthrow the king?" he asked, finally rising to his full height. "You called yourself my equal and then you proved it -- did you think that was without consequence? You _are_ a spoilt child."

"And your queen, apparently," she said, sitting heavily on the edge of her bed. Her hands twisted in her lap. He drew closer to loom over her, tilted her chin up with a finger. Through his gloves, he couldn't feel the heat of her body, though he knew she was warm -- humans always were. Or at least, living ones were.

"A queen," he said, "has duties."

She stared up at him, and she no longer demanded that he be frightening -- she was not frightened. He wasn't sure what she wanted from him now. She lifted her chin, pushed his hand away. "All right, then," she said. "But I know how this works. I’ve made my deal with the Labyrinth or -- whatever. But I haven’t made a deal with _you_."

If she was still human, there was more than a bit of goblin to her, too. “Would you have me offer you goblin fruit?” he asked, watched her remember the peach. “Goblin gold cannot be spent. You have already taken my kingdom. I have nothing left to trade.”

She stared searchingly at him, then her mouth pulled up at the corner. “You have your word. Swear me your loyalty, swear that this isn’t a trick or a trap, swear your intentions are good.”

Jareth stared up at her with a fury that would have made the bravest goblin blanch and run. Sarah met his eyes without flinching. “My intentions have never been good. You would have me undo myself.”

“No,” she said, but there was no kindness in it. “I would undo you.”

He had long admired her ruthlessness. Not every girl would destroy a world they were standing in. Not every woman would destroy a man begging on his knees. But Sarah was not just any woman. “I swear,” he said, and watched the way her lips parted, “on my name, and the souls that I have captured, I swear on cold iron and promises broken. You will have my loyalty as long as you reign over the Labyrinth. I cannot guarantee your safety, but I do not intend you harm. My intentions are, as ever, self-serving. I will not survive if the Labyrinth doesn’t.”

He didn’t hold his breath as she thought it over. He didn’t release it when she nodded. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

Relief and anger surged through him in equal measure. "Come along," he said, and took them a step to the left.

Sarah blinked at the shattered landscape, the hole gaping at the center of the Labyrinth, and the profusion of flowers surging out of it in a froth of malignant spring. "Oh, wow," she said. "Hoggle never mentioned..."

"Of course he didn't," Jareth said. "You should have known, Goblin Queen."

"I know now," she said, not rising to his bait. "And here I am." She slid a glance sideways at him, and he could not read it. "We all start somewhere, don't we?"

"Well?" he said, ignoring her. "Fix it."

"How?" she asked.

"If I _knew_ ," he said, carefully enunciating so as not to shout, "I would have done it myself."

"Well, what have you _tried_ ," she asked, temper finally starting to fray. It was about time; she already had the upper hand, he was getting sick of her being _calm_ about it, too.

"I've commanded the stones to rise and bind," he said. "I've scoured the plants. I've sung the weft of the world. And still the hole grows."

"Did you ask Ludo to help? He's pretty good with rocks."

"No, I didn't ask the _monster_ ," Jareth said, voice dripping with scorn. She didn't even look at him when she jabbed him, hard, in the ribs with her elbow. "How _dare you--"_

"You asked me to help," Sarah said. "Don't insult my friends."

Jareth pressed his lips together to keep from shouting. "Fine," he gritted out. "I did not ask... Ludo, no."

"I need a closer look," she said, staring down at the riot of color.

"I am at your disposal, My Queen," he said, and if she noticed his bitterness, she didn't react to it. He took her arm and brought them closer, so her toes were hanging over the edge of the chasm, thorny apples of the devil's snare catching in the loose fabric of her pajama pants. She grabbed onto him as they swayed over the drop, her grip tight enough to bruise.

"Oh," she breathed. "It's beautiful." She glanced sidelong at Jareth. "In a horrible sort of way, of course. You're sure you want that awful castle back?"

"Absolutely positive," he said.

"Okay," she said. "Well, to fix it I've got to undo what I did last time, right? Kind of. I'm not giving you Toby."

"He's too old now, anyway," Jareth said, following her as she retreated from the edge. She paced, tapping her finger against her lips as she thought.

"I didn't know you had age restrictions on your kidnapping," she said, flashing a small smile at him. Somehow it infuriated him more than anything else she'd done.

"I only take those that are wished to me," he said haughtily. "And if they're old enough to remember themselves as human, they remain so. I don't want a bunch of snotty children cluttering up the place, it's hard enough to keep things running with the goblins, and they're good at building things." He paused a moment, recollecting what the Goblin City had looked like before it had been engulfed. "Well, they're amusing, anyway."

"Okay," she said, eyebrows high. "So, undoing what was done... this is the Labyrinth, so it all runs on what you _think_ should work -- if we did the Labyrinth in reverse, maybe? The city's right out, obviously -- um, the peach, that horrible dream you trapped me in. Can we go back?"

"You'll have to conjure the peach," he said. "My Queen."

She frowned, but didn't argue. She'd changed so much from the girl he'd known -- that girl would have cried, "Not fair!" and stamped her foot and -- well, she would have managed eventually. This woman had taken his lessons to heart. He'd watched her do it -- of course he'd watched her, the one who defeated him. Always from a distance, the fogged memories of her _friends_ , after each time she called them from his realm into her own. In person there was none of the overwhelming affection that Hoggle felt, or Didymus' courtly devotion. In person, his feelings were his own and they were far more complex.

There was a line between her brows as she concentrated, and she turned her hand over, an alluring shift of bones in her wrist, and there was nothing there. "It's not working," she said, and looked up at him. "I know you can't do it for me, but maybe a hint?"

"A deal for a deal, Goblin Queen,” he said, stalking towards her. “What will you pay me?"

"Your castle isn't enough?"

"No," he said, drawing close enough that she had to tilt her head back to stare up at him. "It's not."

She made a face. "Of course not. I have, um," she patted at the pockets of her flannel pajama pants. "Not much on me. Will you take an IOU?"

"Would you promise me your firstborn?" he asked, amused.

"You promised your loyalty," she said, aiming for _strident_ and landing a half-tone below _whiny_. And no matter her tone, she was right. He had _sworn_. He’d sworn very little in his long life, and he’d always kept his word. She had not been as careful as a true fae would have, extracting his promise, but he was compelled all the same.

"Watch your hand carefully and see the peach in it," he said, taking her by the shoulders and turning her so he could press against her back and slide his hand down her arm until his thumb rested at the base of her wrist. "Sometimes, all you need is a change in perspective."

She frowned seriously at her hand, but sometime in the intervening years she had learned confidence and did not flinch away from his touch or purring tone. He was leashed, and she held the lead, and would as long the Labyrinth was hers. She was young enough not to notice the limits of that just yet. 

Humans were warmer than goblins and he felt almost scorched by her, pressed to her as he was. "Close your eyes," he whispered into her ear, breath stirring her hair.

Sarah shivered and, wonder of wonders, did as he said, though not without a mistrustful sideways glance.

"Now," he said, tightening his fingers so her arm started to rise, "open them and see the peach. It was always there, just waiting for you to call it."

The first time, it didn’t work. She stared balefully at him and at her hand, and then dutifully closed her eyes once again and dropped her hand to her side. “It’s there,” she murmured to herself. “It’s there, it’s like tripping over furniture in the dark, just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean anything. It’s there, it’s there, it’s there.” And once more, she raised her hand.

By the time her eyes had fluttered open, her hand was fully turned and lifted, and a peach waited in it. It was a lovely peach, ripe and dark, and begging to be eaten. When she looked at it, she huffed a disbelieving laugh, a look of stunned delight on her face.

"I did it!" she said, smiling at him. She wore triumph well, his conquering queen. "We should go in together, right?"

"As you will," he said. She hadn't pulled away, and it took just a twitch of his hand to encourage her to lift the peach the rest of the way to her mouth.

"There better not be a worm in this one," she said, and bit deeply. The skin of the peach split under her sharp teeth, and juice rolled out of it, sliding in glossy trails down her wrist. He watched the droplets hungrily as she wiped her lips with her wrist. "Messy," she said, then offered it over her shoulder to him.

He took his bite from the same spot as hers, wondering how much of the sweetness was the peach. Her magic was thick and pungent, and rolled down his throat with the juice.

Together, intertwined, they sank to the ground, and rose dancing in a dream of masquerade.

The mask she had put him in covered his entire face, and it was not until he saw his reflection in her wide eyes that he realized she had made him an owl once more. She, of course, wore no mask. Humans always kept their affectations deeper.

The crowds whirled around them, their laughter joyful rather than mocking. Jareth, who never resisted temptation, whipped her through the quick steps of a waltz until she was panting hotly against his neck. He didn't stop until she planted her feet and shoved him back.

 _"Focus,"_ Sarah snapped, but her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were dark, and he caught a strand of her hair and wrapped it around his finger, binding them together once more.

"Believe me, Goblin Queen," he said, low and intimate, "I am."

When she swallowed, he watched her throat bob with a familiar hunger.

"Not," she said, with some difficulty, "on me."

He smiled behind his mask and released her hair, and swept into a grand bow. "As my Queen commands."

She shook her head irritably at him, and began to walk the edges of the dream. "Last time, I broke the wall. Now what?"

"You could dance until the clock strikes thirteen," he said, taking up a flute of champagne and shifting his mask to the side to sip it. Like all dream foods, it was sweet and unsatisfying, and he was thirstier when the flute was done than when he'd started.

"That feels like giving up," she said, pressing a hand to the cold, curved glass of the wall. "I brought myself here, that's the opposite of breaking out... what else does it need?" She glanced over at him, lips quirking. "It's a pity there aren't more stories about _building_ Goblin kingdoms. I could really use the map."

"You shall have to write your own, I suppose," he said, taking a seat and setting his mask aside completely. The dreams, the people the goblins would have grown up to be, flurried around him and then away. They didn't know what to do with a dethroned king anymore than he knew how to be one.

"That'll be how I pay my way through grad school," she said.

"I live to serve," he said and she looked sidelong at him.

"You do, don't you," she said, consideringly. He didn't flinch as she walked over to him, slow and measured. The dress she wore was as white as a wedding and dripping with jewels, and there was a susurrus as she drew closer, the whisper of fabric and the tinkling of jewels. Close up, he could see the riot of flowers, stitched in white on white, the ghost of a garden crawling up her body. He closed his eyes to better appreciate the sound. She stopped between his splayed knees and cupped his jaw with her warm, smooth hand, tilting his chin up. "What did you want, the last time we were here?"

His eyes fluttered open, rather against his intention, but he needed to see her, the glittering tiara, the shimmer of fairy dust on her lips. "I would have kept you as well as your brother," he admitted easily enough. "Avarice is my nature."

"But you couldn't have turned me into a goblin."

"I could have turned you into a queen," he said.

At that she smiled. "You did."

"Not," he said, "in the way I had intended."

"You taught me something about intent," she said, and her face was very close to his own. And then her mouth was on his, tentative and searching, and the dream collapsed around them.

Back in the Labyrinth, Sarah scrambled off his chest, lurching clumsily to her feet. "Did it work?" she asked, and then drooped, staring at the chasm. Jareth propped himself up on an elbow and watched her shrink into herself. "I thought for sure..."

"Sarah," he said, delight curling his lips, "were you using me? You awful girl."

When she looked at him, she was blushing but her jaw was set. "It's no more than you deserve."

"Nor less," he agreed. "What shall we try next?"

"Well, the oubliette, maybe? Those Helping Hands... maybe they actually can help?"

The Helping Hands only helped people to their graves, but he saw no reason to tell her that. She had changed the Labyrinth, after all, and that would change those living in it. She had a different sort of cruelty than he did, and he was eager to see it in action once more.

This time, _she_ took _him_ by the hand and they stepped together from one place to another. Her magic was unrefined and smelled of spring, so bright and pungent that he sneezed. The oubliette was as damp and claustrophobic as he remembered, though there was a carpet of moss beneath their feet that had not been there before. 

Sarah stood below the hole in the roof, her face green and alien in the murky light. Stern with concentration, she looked something like a queen.

Before he thought about it, Jareth brushed the back of his hand against her cheek, and was hit by the sudden startling wish that his hands were bare. Her cheek was probably as soft as her hand had been. Maybe softer. She startled, frowning at him, but not drawing away.

"You would wear a crown well, Sarah," he said, letting his voice caress her as she pushed his hand away.

"I don't need one," she said. Then, "Give me a boost."

Pointedly, wordlessly, he sank to a knee, allowing her to step onto his thigh and leap for the hole. She grabbed the edge, and he heard her say, "Helping Hands? I could use a hand."

"Going up?" the Hands asked, with unseemly eagerness. If she were any sort of goblin, she'd have known not to trust that tone, but she was excruciatingly human at times, and all she said was, "Yes, please."

They pulled her up faster than she could change her mind, and he heard her yelp.

Jareth sighed, slapping at the mark her shoe had left on his leg, and stood. "Truly," he said -- to himself, for lack of other audience -- "this is what you had to lose the Labyrinth to."

And then he transformed into an owl and flew up after her.

The Helping Hands did not release their prisoners at the same place that the floor opened up beneath them; that wasn't how geometry worked in the Labyrinth. There was no such thing as backtracking. There was no going home again. Except Sarah had managed it, and that had thrown the dimensions into confusion. Doors that had opened into two different places now opened into four, roads that had led both up and down added _back_ and _forth_ , and the Helping Hands, which had dropped people into the oubliette, and raised them into the walls now released Sarah, and Jareth behind her, into the heart of the Venus flytrap that had swallowed the castle.

It stayed open around them a moment, long enough to look around and see where they were, the crumbled remains of the castle, and the pale light of the sun. And then it snapped decisively shut around them, caging them in a lattice of green.

It was so much larger than them that it was merely claustrophobic and not crushing.

"That wasn't very helpful at all," Sarah said, put out and crouching like Atlas, shoulder firm against the press of the trap.

"You finally start to understand," Jareth sighed.

"No, I _understand_ the Labyrinth," Sarah snapped. "Everything's set up to be awful and tricky and move under your feet and behind your back, and no one means what they say, or says what they mean, but that's not--"

Jareth found himself smirking. If he could have straightened his back, he would have loomed over her. As it was, he showed her his teeth. The light in here was horrible, a dark, fleshy pink where it wasn't a sickly green, and he waited for her flinch. "Not _what_ , Sarah? Not _fair?"_

"Not," she said carefully, glowering at him, "what I was expecting."

He hummed, the smirk staying firmly on his lips. He didn't say anything else, though -- as a vassal, it was important to hold his strike till it would hurt the most. It would not do to spend himself too soon.

"Shut up," she muttered and turned her face from him. She began to work her way to the edge of the trap, grunting with the effort. After a moment to enjoy her struggles, Jareth followed.

The surface of the trap was spongy and smooth and slick, but at least it didn't smell anything like the Bog of Eternal Stench -- there was a peculiar carnivorous scent to it, the smell of the things it had consumed, and the acid it had used to dissolve them. If he stood still for too long, his hands began to tingle, though his gloves remained whole. The power of suggestion was strong indeed. What could he suggest to Sarah?

"What is your plan, oh Queen?" he called, to see her glare over her shoulder at him.

"My _plan_ ," she said, "is to get to the edge and see what we're working with. A change in perspective." This time, when she looked at him, it was with the smugness of turning his words back on him.

"What a quick learner you are," he said.

She ignored him, reaching the edge of the leaf and wrestling her upper body out through the interlocked fronds that edged the trap. When he reached her, he hesitated and then wrapped a hand around her ankle, in case she fell. It would serve her right, and return the Labyrinth to him, undo the damage she had wrought, and yet... he did not finish the thought, but made sure his grasp was secure.

"We have to jump," she said.

"Oh?" he said. "And why's that?"

"I jumped to save Toby. It just makes sense. Leap of faith. Come on."

He didn't release her ankle, but followed her as she wriggled through and merely shifted his grip to her wrist as they hesitated over the vertiginous drop. Below them, the crack loomed wide, brimming over with thick and threatening plant life.

Sarah looked at him once, her jaw set. There was fear in her eyes, but it had not stopped her before and it did not stop her now. She took the step and pulled him after her. They fell together, slow as a wish. With each feat she accomplished, her magic grew to match, and so Jareth was unsurprised when they landed together in the throne room, remade in her image, flowers on every surface, painted, carved, engraved and chased in gold. It was cleaner than his, no dirty straw, or chickens running around. It looked something like that castle she lived in at college, dark stone and false directions. The throne was grand and delicate, a fairytale concoction for a girl who had never quite outgrown fairytales, frothing silver and jewels. The arms dripped enameled wisteria on silver vines. The flowers that had consumed his Labyrinth were tamed in hers.

In his court, it would have tarnished already. But Sarah pulled away from him and skated her hand over the back of it, delicately, as if she was afraid it would disappear under her touch.

"Well," she said, clenching her hand firmly on the headrest, a message to herself as much as to him. The hard edged petal of a silver lily pressed into her palm. "I seem to have restored your Labyrinth."

"Yours," he corrected, and it wasn't as bitter on his tongue as it could have been.

She looked at the throne, the crown waiting on it that hadn't been there a moment before, and then glanced out the soaring windows, nothing like the narrow arrow slits Jareth had created -- the heart of the Labyrinth, under his rule, had never been meant to be accessible. From those windows, they could see the Goblin City, restored and teaming with life, goblin and plant. It was sweet, not ramshackle, now, the leaning houses turned into lovely homes, each sided with a mural of flowers. It was bright and inviting. Who would take a child back from a place like this? 

And looking past the City, the Labyrinth, reordered and complicated as a million root systems, layered one on top of the other -- who would be able to find their way to the heart?

Sarah, who thought of herself as kind, had created an entirely different sort of trap.

"Mine," she agreed, with the same determination and wonder that she had once said, _You have no power over me._

"Will you take your throne? Greet your subjects?"

Sarah's eyes flicked from the window to him, and then to the throne once more. She took a steadying breath, then circled it and picked up the crown. In the crown, there was none of the misleading delicacy of the throne or the castle -- it was a crown of black iron, straightforward spears that would circle her head with savagery. 

"Let me," he said, before she could lower it on her own brow. The iron burned his fingers, but it was worth it to have her stare steadily up at him as he crowned her, finally, years late. 

Her lashes swept down as the full weight of the crown rested on her head, but after a moment, she opened her eyes once more. Then, her breath steady, she sat on the throne and was Queen.

Jareth knelt before her once more, close enough that he could have reached out and grasped the edge of her flannel pajama pants. He kept his hands to himself. "I am yours, with the rest of the Labyrinth. If you will not have us, you will destroy us."

"My kingdom is as great as yours..." she said wonderingly, then reached out and tilted his chin up so they were eye to eye. "I never meant it literally."

"It's a bit late for that," he murmured, so as not to push away her fingers.

"I don't," she said, and she was serious and steady and deadly earnest, "regret it." And then she kissed him.

This time there was nothing tentative about it. After the long night, her lips were chapped and bitten and rough, but that was a mere detail, compared to the way they moved against his own. Sarah kissed as she did everything -- a mix of bravado, real confidence, curiosity, and eagerness. She kissed him like she wanted to do it again and again, pulling away, and coming back, her hands holding him tight to her. There was no escape, and he did not want one.

When the clock struck thirteen, when the palace filled with her audience, when Sarah finally pulled back for good, she did not go far. "Will you be my regent, when I return to the human world?" she asked.

And Jareth, who had always given Sarah exactly what she wanted, and knew once again what that was, said, "I would rather be your consort."

Sarah, who had never been meek, Sarah who was Queen, could still blush, it seemed. “You’re a snake,” she said, chin high and voice even despite the bright red of her cheeks. “Why would I invite you to my bed?”

“You will make me beg, then,” he said, smirking up at her. She _had_ adjusted quickly. “I will give you my firstborn, Sarah. You have already made me swear my loyalty, Sarah, so accept it. You know what it means, don’t you, for one to swear themselves to another? Shall we not make it official?”

She shook her head, but she wasn’t angry. Instead she spoke almost absently. “I see you, Jareth. _You should not peep at goblin men_. But I never was Lizzie, was I?”

“You speak of human things,” Jareth said. “I have made you an offer. Will you accept it? All you have to give me is everything.”

At that, Sarah smiled. “You have that backwards. All I have to do is _take_ everything. Yes, Jareth. I’ll take you as mine. I’ll take your kingdom, and your children, and your heart. But I will not be satisfied with half-measures. You will not work against me, not ever, and you will swear that, or I will cast you out and leave the Labyrinth to crumble.”

“When you fall,” he said, “I swear that it will not be my doing.”

From where he knelt before her, Sarah looked only just more than human. The weight of the crown made her sit straight and severe, the heavy spears of black iron made her pale face gaunt and almost fae beneath them. She didn’t look like a different person than she had when he had approached her to beg her help. The furrow between her brows was the same as when she’d studied her thick textbook -- thoughtful, but not confused. “Okay,” she said, astonishingly casual in her crown and holey t-shirt and flannel pajama pants. “That’ll do.”

There was a room in the heart of the castle at the heart of the Labyrinth, and every year it grew larger to accommodate the table at the center. Every year, a few goblins took a seat, and every year they spoke more, concerns and hopes and opinions, and every year Sarah listened and every year the Labyrinth grew. It grew like a creeping vine across the world; children wished themselves or their siblings, and children stayed and became goblins under the Labyrinth’s kindly Queen. And every time Jareth kissed his Queen, he was glad.


End file.
